Michele Well Done: Singer Shares Vulnerable Songs About Inadequacy and Lost Love

(by Cinzia Conti) “For my third time in Sanremo I have somewhat undermined my artistic vision. The first two times I went with a musical world that was very defined, it was the world of the singer-songwriter ballad, now there has been something in the writing, the whole musical path that starts with this song starts from a theatrical system of construction, there is a lot of a cinematic attitude and the harmonic and lyrical writing of the song follows this vision a bit. And being able to present it live will be even more important given that live performance is the real engine from which this new project was born.” Four years after his last participation, Michele Bravi brings ‘Prima o Poi’ to the 76th edition of the festival, the song that will be the ‘ram’s head’ of a new recording project due out before the summer and of a tour that will bring him back in front of the public who also followed his performances as an actor, writer and judge of Amici (2023-24).
‘Sooner or later’ is an internal monologue on the sense of inadequacy dedicated to all the people who, at least once, have felt out of place in the world. “It’s the feeling – he says – of someone who stays in the rain without remembering which is the right intercom to ring, of someone who moves clumsily looking for a familiar point to return to”. Also because in life “everything is a little more banal, everything is more splintered, everything is a little more broken than how we tell ourselves and how we see it in films”. And also the other thing that strikes the Umbrian artist and that he wants to convey is how sometimes what surrounds us is not at all in line with what we have inside: “How many times are we sad to the point of wanting pouring rain or a black black sky and instead maybe there is a brazen sun?”.
On the Sanremo performance he reveals: “Maestro Alterisio Paoletti will accompany me, few know that that genius is behind a lot of works by Celine Dion, by David Foster, he is an enormous Italian talent and with him we managed to ensure that that theatricality was also on those who perform with me, that is, the orchestra this year more than ever is not a musical carpet but their performance is a continuous dialogue with my voice”.
The video clip also marks an important and fruitful collaboration: “One thing that is a source of pride for me is that I managed to convince Ilenia Pastorelli to throw herself into her first directorial career. I tend to always have a very strong control over my artistic content but in this case I am happy to have entrusted myself completely to her, I want to say that she wrote and directed that short film.” And he adds: “His gaze allowed me to treat the song as not mine.
Ilenia’s vision was more convincing, because it was less didactic, it was much more extravagant, it was much more direct and violent on a slice of emotion that I instead had a little diluted in many other colors. After that video clip I rerecorded the song because there were things that I hadn’t understood and that she showed me”. It’s impossible not to mention Mauro Balletti, Mina’s historic photographer: “For the visual translation I’m continuing my collaboration with him, we’re taking a more ironic, more pop key, I’m making myself available to this playwright narrative”.
Bravi admits that he wasn’t sure if it was the right song for Sanremo but was then convinced by the enthusiastic reception of his ‘clan’. “Harmonically it was very complex, this opening in the minor that you don’t expect, Sanremo is such a transversal stage, it almost seemed like I wanted to do the sought-after one…
Instead, both the record companies and my mother immediately liked it and for the first time in the family chat she told me: ‘You wrote a beautiful song'” he says laughing.
On the duet with Fiorella Mannoia with the homage to Ornella Vanoni he says: “Fiorella is a little piece of my heart. I respected Proma only professionally but then I met her and discovered that I like her even more than her talent, I share with her the same grotesqueness, the same cynicism which then suddenly becomes passion for things, the same type of irony”.
On Eurovision he states that he won’t bandage his head before having broken it and that therefore he will think about it in due time but he reasons: “Now I would be against an exclusion, even if I can never agree with what is happening in Gaza, I have my own very clear and very clear thoughts. But I am completely against any culture of cancellation, I strongly believe in democracy, I will never be able to silence those who think contrary to me. If I were Mr Eurovision, I would put my hands in hair…”.
Finally, we cannot fail to mention the Ghali case at the opening ceremony of the Olympics: “Dissent starts from the assumption that he is recognized as a person who stands out against a genocide, against a war. Is that dissent? That is a position that he has, his value system. I find it absurd that we self-impose the rule that anyone who says what he thinks is dissenting while he is just speaking. I’m sorry that he is seen like this.”

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